Process modeling systems have been used in process industries such as refining and pharmaceutical manufacturing for many purposes. Process engineers use these systems to design and evaluate new processes, redesign, retrofit and/or optimize existing process plants. U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,515, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses one example of such a process modeling system that may be used in different application modes such as simulation, data reconciliation, and optimization.
Some modeling systems use process models, also called flowsheet models, to represent complex real-world systems like process plants or refineries. A flowsheet model is composed of individual units connected by streams and may have an identity associated with the flowsheet. Units may be either a process or a non-process units. A process unit is an item of operating hardware such as a heat exchanger or a pump. A non-process unit is something other than an item of operating hardware, typically a passive device. For example, a non-process unit may represent a flow meter, thermocouple or pressure gauge.
As the size and complexity of flowsheets have increased to model large-scale systems, the need to enable modular, possibly parallel development of the flowsheets has become increasingly important. The ability to modularize process modeling systems has several advantages. Manufacturing facilities are logically organized with modularity and hierarchy. For example, a facility is comprised of plants, plants contain units, and units contain areas. More often than not, work processes in an enterprise are direct consequences of such modularity and hierarchy. Implementing a model structure that reflects such modularity and hierarchy is a strong enabler for model-centric business processing.
Also, large degrees of repetition and parallelism—such as multiple furnaces—exists in manufacturing facilities. Such parallelism is not restricted to a single unit operation model in a model library. The ability to develop a model fragment representing a group of unit operations and process streams—that can be placed repeatedly in an assembly—can reduce efforts required for modeling large-scale facilities with repetitive/parallel constructs. There are distinct maintenance efficiencies in breaking-down complex models into several smaller and more manageable models, and then analyzing each model or sub-model individually. The ability to extract fragments from an assembly can increase application maintainability.
Although present devices are functional, they are not sufficiently modular or otherwise satisfactory. Accordingly, a system and method are needed to address the shortfalls of present technology and to provide other new and innovative features.